"Enterprises have worked through some excess capacity issues, and they are looking to the future," said Colleen Graham, principal analyst for Gartner. "Many companies are examining ways to augment and improve reporting and data management capabilities to meet increasing regulatory compliance requirements. The increasing strategic importance of data warehouse and strategic business intelligence initiatives has provided some of the growth in the RDBMS market."

RDBMS on the Windows server platform showed a slight improvement in 2003 with new license revenue reaching $2.8 billion, a 3.8 percent increase from 2002. Microsoft extended its market share in this segment to 47.3 percent, from 44.3 percent in 2002.

The segment that suffered a decline in new license revenue in 2003 was RDBMS on Unix (not including Linux). New license revenue in this market decreased 5.9 percent in 2003. Oracle accounted for 57.4 percent of new license revenue in this segment.

The fastest growing segment in 2003 was RDBMS on the Linux platform. New license revenue for Linux RDBMS totaled $299.3 million in 2003, a 158 percent increase from 2002. Oracle's revenue in this segment grew 360.8 percent in 2003, and it accounted for 69.1 percent of the market. IBM's market share totaled 28.5 percent in 2003, down from its 57.6 percent market share in 2002.

Gartner analysts said some of the revenue growth for the RDBMS market in 2003 can be attributed to currency conversion. When revenue from non-U.S. sales is converted to U.S. dollars, a portion of the growth is a product of the weak dollar and not attributed to increased demand.

Additional information is available in the Gartner Alert "RDBMS Market Grew 5 Percent in 2003." The report provides market share results for the top-tier vendors in the RDBMS market, as well as RDBMS software on Linux, Unix and Windows. The report is available on Gartner's Web site at http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=449616&ref=g_search.

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